Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Bart Ehrman and the Divinity of Jesus in the Gospels

It was a few months ago that Bart Ehrman posted that he had changed his mind regarding the divinity of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. However, I keep seeing Muslims quote his older material on this subject. Therefore I thought I should post these references so they are conveniently available together for our use in this matter.
The argument based on Jesus as liar, lunatic, or Lord was predicated on the assumption that Jesus had called himself God. ... I had come to realize that none of our earliest traditions indicates that Jesus said any such thing about himself. And surely if Jesus had really spent his days in Galilee and then Jerusalem calling himself God, all our sources would be eager to report it. To put it differently, if Jesus claimed he was divine, it seemed very strange indeed that Matthew, Mark, and Luke all failed to say anything about it. Did they just forget to mention that part? I had come to realise that Jesus’ divinity was part of John’s theology, not part of Jesus’ own teaching. (Bart Ehrman, Jesus Interrupted, 2009, pp. 141-142)
Until a year ago I would have said – and frequently did say, in the classroom, in public lectures, and in my writings – that Jesus is portrayed as God in the Gospel of John but not, definitely not, in the other Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. ... I finally yielded. These Gospels do indeed think of Jesus as divine. Being made the very Son of God who can heal, cast out demons, raise the dead, pronounce divine forgiveness, receive worship together suggests that even for these Gospels Jesus was a divine being, not merely a human. ... So yes, now I agree that Jesus is portrayed as a divine being, a God-man, in all the Gospels. But in very different ways, depending on which Gospel you read. (Bart Ehrman, ehrmanblog.org, posted 13-04-2014)

8 comments:

Unknown said...

aaaaaanddd suddenly muslims no longer think that ehrman is a reliable source.

Unknown said...

Muslims could not care less that Ehrman's views are lethal to Islam. Their use of Ehrman to bash Christianity is based on the principal:

"Any stick is good enough to beat a dog with"!

Unknown said...

http://orontes.jimdo.com/2014/07/30/orthodox-christian-town-of-mhardeh-under-attack

Unknown said...

Wow... Now I'm wondering who they will refer to,..

Anonymous said...

Ehrman is supposed to be a scholar and he only just worked out that Matthew, Mark and Luke point to Jesus being Divine? He can't be much of a scholar then if it has taken him this long to see the simple big picture that anyone can plainly see.

Samuel Green said...

#young steve

I completely agree with you.

Unknown said...

#young steve

I think that's how God's plan worked. He used someone who is seemed inteligent, to raise an argument, so that Christians could study the Gospel further to defend it. But when the time comes, the truth will revealed itself unto those who tried to deny it...

Chinchilla PetVerse said...

Guys, I am not a fan of Bart and as pointed out by Daniel Wallace, he is an opportunist who publishes different content in his commercial work and different content in his peer reviewed articles.

But, all said and done, we have to give it to Bart for not being hypocritical and accepting the logical conclusion of his analysis... atleast in this area... at the level that Bart is and the conclusions that he has churned out in the past, it must have been pretty tough on him to come to this conclusion... PUBLICLY...

All we can hope and pray is that the Muslims who know about the lie of Islam have atleast the level of integrity that Bart has.

To sum it, Bart agrees with us on the crucifixion and Divinity of Jesus Christ (as per the gospel records)... that's two cheers since suddenly Bart is no longer the blue eyed boy of the Muslims...