How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
by Bart D. Ehrman
I’ve been reading Bart Ehrman ever since my journey away from Christianity first started. And although I’ve found some of his writings more compelling than others, I’m still glad there’s someone like him out there doing God’s work. Or not-God’s work, which is actually more important.
How Jesus Became God mainly deals with the questions and issues church figures were dealing with when they went about interpreting just who exactly Jesus was considering how little we actually know about him. Was he a man? A god? The God? An angel? A lesser deity? What did the authors of the gospels think? What did Paul think? What did Jesus say about himself? There’s also a lot of focus on just how important it was for Jesus to come back from the dead and what influence that had on the narrative we now accept as his story. The stakes were incredibly high and the whole foundation of the religion was depending on it. Pretty powerful and important stuff, and as is the case with all his books, the reader can be sure that Ehrman has a scholarly and educated approach to his writing. It’s also very easy to read, because God forbid our scholars actually speak in a tone most people in the room would understand, right?
Although How Jesus Became God sometimes gets way too much into the dirt and detail of the feuds and arguments happening at the time (honestly, I don’t really care since it’s all circular reasoning anyway, and even Constantine saw that), Ehrman still asks the important questions most of us have never considered and makes this a very interesting book.
It might be too late for atheists/agnostics like Ehrman, and maybe that’s why he’s one of the leaders on this subject.
Get your copy here.
