Originally posted by siam
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Well, Ehrman is wrong about Jesus never alluding to being God in the synoptics:
The conclusion that the synoptics present a high Christological/divine view of Jesus does not require "cherry-picked quotes", but rather looking at those quotes in their proper context. Even the gospel of Mark, which by most scholars is considered to be the earliest of the gospels, has Jesus refer to himself as the Son of Man, seated at the right hand of the Power (i.e God) and coming with the clouds of heaven in both chapter 13 and 14, a clear claim of Jesus to being the divine Son of Man described in one of Daniel's visions and being equal with God. Mark also has Jesus claiming, in chapter 2, to have the authority to forgive sins (something which the Jews knew was a prerogative of God alone) on account of being the Son of Man, infusing the title with additional divine significance. We have Mark reporting Jesus walking on water, which again has pretty clear reference to OT passages such as Job 9:8 speaking about God, or Yahweh walking, or treading, on the waves of the sea. And there's also the account of Jesus calming the sea and the storm in Mark 4, and in the Old Testament having control and dominion of the sea is something of which only God/Yahweh is capable.
In short, even the earliest gospel of Mark has an incredibly high Christological theology, and the author is heavily implying that Jesus is divine and equal with God, by recounting Jesus claiming divine titles for himself (i.e the Son of Man title) and by recounting Jesus doing acts that in the OT were prerogatives of Yahweh alone.
But it doesn't stop there. We also have the letters of Paul. In Philippians we have the famous Christological hymn which is believed to have been written before Philippians (or as critical scholarship would have it, the fragments of different letters that were later combined together into what we now know as Philippians) being written down, perhaps as early as 40 AD, which depending on when Jesus was crucified (30 AD or 33 AD) means that the view of Jesus being divine and equal with God could have arosen as early as 10, perhaps even 7 years after his crucifixion. At the very least it puts a hard limit on how long it took for the belief that Jesus was divine to arise at around 30 years (if we're assuming that Philippians should be dated as late as possible, and assuming that the cited Christ Hymn/Poem wasn't composed that much earlier, which is debatable), which is still around 5-15 years earlier than the earliest gospel, if we're going by how critical scholars generally date Mark.
Lastly there's also Romans (with the consesus view being that the letter was written somewhere between 55-57), where Paul claims in chapter 10, verse 9, that anyone who confesses that Jesus is Lord will be saved, and later in the chapter explains what he means by confessing that Jesus is Lord by citing Joel 2:32, where Lord is used as a stand-in for the divine name YHWH. In other words, Paul is claiming that anyone who believes in their heart that God raised Jesus from the death, and who confesses that Jesus is YHWH will be saved.
To summarize, not only does the gospels present a high view Christological view, with Jesus claiming titles and performing acts that put him on equal footing with Yahweh in the Old Testament, we have Paul in his letters making explicit claims of Jesus being YHWH and citing an early Christian poem (composed probably years before Paul wrote it down in Philippians) which claims that was Jesus was pre-existent in the form of God and being equal with God.
And that's not even counting all of the allusions to Jesus being the Wisdom of God (i.e Wisdom Christology) present in the synoptic gospels, which if taken into account would bring up the Christology of the synoptic gospels as being on the same level as John's Logos Christology, making any claims of any substantial development on the views on Jesus' divinity between the time of the synoptics and the gospel of John as being simply untenable. The view that John presents a substantially evolved and high/exalted view on Christ's divinity as opposed to the low Christological view of the synoptic gospels lacks any credible support in the texts themselves.
In short, even the earliest gospel of Mark has an incredibly high Christological theology, and the author is heavily implying that Jesus is divine and equal with God, by recounting Jesus claiming divine titles for himself (i.e the Son of Man title) and by recounting Jesus doing acts that in the OT were prerogatives of Yahweh alone.
But it doesn't stop there. We also have the letters of Paul. In Philippians we have the famous Christological hymn which is believed to have been written before Philippians (or as critical scholarship would have it, the fragments of different letters that were later combined together into what we now know as Philippians) being written down, perhaps as early as 40 AD, which depending on when Jesus was crucified (30 AD or 33 AD) means that the view of Jesus being divine and equal with God could have arosen as early as 10, perhaps even 7 years after his crucifixion. At the very least it puts a hard limit on how long it took for the belief that Jesus was divine to arise at around 30 years (if we're assuming that Philippians should be dated as late as possible, and assuming that the cited Christ Hymn/Poem wasn't composed that much earlier, which is debatable), which is still around 5-15 years earlier than the earliest gospel, if we're going by how critical scholars generally date Mark.
Lastly there's also Romans (with the consesus view being that the letter was written somewhere between 55-57), where Paul claims in chapter 10, verse 9, that anyone who confesses that Jesus is Lord will be saved, and later in the chapter explains what he means by confessing that Jesus is Lord by citing Joel 2:32, where Lord is used as a stand-in for the divine name YHWH. In other words, Paul is claiming that anyone who believes in their heart that God raised Jesus from the death, and who confesses that Jesus is YHWH will be saved.
To summarize, not only does the gospels present a high view Christological view, with Jesus claiming titles and performing acts that put him on equal footing with Yahweh in the Old Testament, we have Paul in his letters making explicit claims of Jesus being YHWH and citing an early Christian poem (composed probably years before Paul wrote it down in Philippians) which claims that was Jesus was pre-existent in the form of God and being equal with God.
And that's not even counting all of the allusions to Jesus being the Wisdom of God (i.e Wisdom Christology) present in the synoptic gospels, which if taken into account would bring up the Christology of the synoptic gospels as being on the same level as John's Logos Christology, making any claims of any substantial development on the views on Jesus' divinity between the time of the synoptics and the gospel of John as being simply untenable. The view that John presents a substantially evolved and high/exalted view on Christ's divinity as opposed to the low Christological view of the synoptic gospels lacks any credible support in the texts themselves.
http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...l=1#post715218
And
Your claim was that we don't see Jesus being referred to as God until John's gospel in 100 AD. I showed that Jesus is unequivocally claimed to be God in Philippians 2 and that Paul also makes the claim that Jesus is YHWH in Romans 10. Both of these letters are thought to have been written around 50-60 AD, which means that the idea that Jesus was divine arose at least 40 years earlier than John's gospel being written down (assuming you accept a dating of 100 AD for the gospel).
If there is any "evolution" in the concept of who Jesus is in the New Testament writings it's so minor that it's barely noticeable. Jesus is presented as divine and equal with God almost from the very earliest of the NT writings that we have (Paul's letters) and the synoptic gospels themselves present Jesus as laying claims to titles and honors that his contemporaries understood to be blasphemous and claiming equality with God. Not to mention Jesus saying and doing things that in the OT were prerogatives of YHWH.
So in short, your claim that we don't see Jesus being referred to as God, or divine, until in John's gospel is patently and demonstrably false.
http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...l=1#post715322
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