A Book Review: How Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman

Here is a series of questions to consider:

Who wrote the 4 Gospels in the New Testament? How do you know the Bible recorded the words of Jesus accurately? Has Jesus always being God? Finally, what did early Christians mean when they said Jesus was God?

You might think, you can easily answer these questions, but let me tell you my story.

Back in the days when I was still a Christian and at the height of my faith, I thought the 4 Gospels were written by the 4 followers of Jesus; Mark, Matthew, Luke and John.

Or so I thought...

Then one day I read a book written by Professor Bart Ehrman, a distinguished and leading scholar in the field of Religious Studies, who has studied and taught the Bible in mainstream scholarship for more than 30 years. It is a book called, "Did Jesus Exist?" (click here to read my review, written in 2012 when I was still a Christian). In that book, Professor Ehrman provided historical evidence that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical character, who lived approximately 2000 years ago. It suffices to say, I was impressed by Professor Ehrman's depth of knowledge, and I also admired his impeccable deductions. But that is not all, that book was very important to me, because it opened my eyes to the world of textual criticism, New Testament authentication, and historical Jesus. These things, as I discovered later, are the prevalent works in mainstream scholarship.

But none of these things were ever taught to me at church!

Furthermore, much to my shock, I also discovered, that mainstream historians often talk about the sources to the Gospels as L, M, and Q. What is this? Basically, the 4 Gospels were written decades after Jesus died. Out of the 4 Gospels, the Gospel of Mark is the earliest written Gospel, with the Gospel of John being written last. John was written more than 60 years after the death of Jesus. John differs greatly from the first 3 Gospels. Historians often refer to the first 3 Gospels; Mark, Luke, and Matthew, as Synoptic Gospels (synoptic means "seen together").

However, the sources for Synoptics went even further back. Mark, Luke, and Matthew sometimes tell the same stories, in the same sequences and the same words. Historians agreed, this is because Luke and Matthew copied from the earlier Mark. However, there are also parts in Luke that are unique to Luke, but cannot be found in Matthew and Mark, and vice versa for Matthew to Luke and Mark. Therefore, scholars attribute the source for the unique stories in Luke, to a source called L, and similarly Matthew to the source M. Finally, both Luke and Matthew sometimes tell stories that are not found in Mark, stories that are made up of sayings, so scholars attribute these sayings to a source called Q (Quelle, the German word for "source").

After I discovered how mainstream scholarship really thinks of the Gospels' authorship, I approached the minister at the church and dropped the question; I asked, "What is the significance of Q, L, and M hypothesis to Christianity's belief about the Bible? Furthermore, when compared to the church, why do mainstream scholars have such a different view on the authorship of the Gospels?"

The minister's answer took me by surprise. The summary of his response - believing the 4 Gospels were written by Mark, Luke, Matthew, and John, has been the church tradition, and such beliefs in the tradition should not be questioned or one may be risking the danger of heresy.

The day when I heard that answer, I knew there was an elephant in the room.

My discovery about Q,L, and M hypothesis made me realize that I was overconfident about Christianity, but it did not lead me to deconvert from Christianity, not immediately. You see, I am a very stubborn person, it is very difficult to convince me to change my belief, especially at the time Christianity was my deeply held belief. It suffices to say, it took A LOT, I mean, A LOT, of powerful reasons and compelling evidence, to finally drag my bull-headed self out of Christianity.

So why am I writing all of this? This is because I am going to review another book written by Professor Bart Ehrman, it is titled "How Jesus became God – The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee". In this book, Professor Ehrman provided an analysis, based on the historical context, and evidence from both the scriptures and early Christianity, to demonstrate how Jesus went from a Jewish preacher who taught radical ideas, to become God of the universe. And the things I mentioned above, that is just to give you a small taste of this book.

Now I am going to give you a little bit more taste of this book, by continuing my story.

Let's fast forward the clock. It was sometime in the year 2014, and 15 months had passed since the day I dropped the question about Q, L, and M hypothesis.

I was discussing Christianity with a friend, who was a Christian turned agnostic. The discussion was 3 ways, it included a Christian minister. The topic revolved around failed Bible prophecies. It wasn't long before my agnostic friend mentioned the verses in Mark 9:1, and Mark 13:30. In both verses, Jesus clearly indicated that he believed the apocalypse was going to arrive before his disciples died. The three of us, we went through an intensive debate.

Equipped with a hermeneutic method called histo-grammatic method, we (the Christians) desperately tried to provide alternative interpretations to those verses, in the hope of resolving the obvious problem – that is, the disciples have all died 2000 years ago, but the apocalypse didn't come as Jesus predicted. My Christian-turned-agnostic friend successfully refuted all alternative interpretations for those 2 verses. I was impressed by my agnostic friend's refutations, his logic was sound. Eventually, I too, changed the side, and joined the fray to challenge the Bible. I still wonder, how the Christian minister must have felt at the time, because he probably didn't expect a Christian (me) would join an agnostic person and challenge the Bible together. Either Way, in the end, when the Christian minister finally ran out of plausible explanations for the verses in Mark, he asked me, "Daniel, so what do you think those verses mean?

His question stunned me, because I unintentionally collapsed the wall of Christian defense, and I was still a Christian at that time! I was stunned because I didn't want to accept the reality, that Jesus' apocalyptic prophecy in Mark failed. So what was my answer to the minister? I replied: "I am not sure what Jesus was really trying to teach in Mark 9 and Mark 13". Then afterward I tried very hard to forget about the disturbing outcome from that discussion. Meanwhile, in the private, I couldn't help but recalled in one of Bart Ehrman's books, he suggested that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet. At that time, I tried to turn my back to all those anomalies about Christianity. In those days I thought, all I needed to do was believing that Jesus came back from the dead, and all other anomalies about Christianity were not important concerns; this way, I could continue to believing in Christianity.

Alas, but the paper cannot blanket over a fire!

The skeleton in the closet would eventually return to haunt me, dragged me into non-belief. From a recollection of my memory, at that time, the failed prophecies in Mark weren't enough to convince me to leave Christianity. Just like if you are a Christian now, you would also come up with some alternative interpretations to explain this problem away, and this problem also wouldn't be enough to convince you to deconvert too. But let me ask you this question:

With the way you are defending and reinterpreting the Bible, if the Bible is wrong, then can you know it is wrong?

 I was once a Christian too, the gears in my head used to turn all the time to justify my belief in the Bible, that it was the infallible word of God. Until one day I finally realized, with the way I was defending and reinterpreting the Bible, even if the scripture is wrong I still wouldn't know it is wrong. When this realization finally dawned on me, I was thunderstruck by it! It was the turning point for my exodus from Christianity. 

From there, it took even more powerful reasons and evidence to eventually deconvert me from Christianity. Some of those reasons and evidence that led to my deconversion, can be found in How Jesus Became God; where Professor Ehrman demonstrated, how the Bible was changed and altered by its believers through the ages for the purpose of promoting Christianity.

I will give you one of many such examples.

Mainstream scholars have consented, the last 12 verses in Mark - That is, the verses about the resurrection, were added by later Christians at around the 10th century. How do they know? Because those 12 verses did not appear in copies of Mark until the 10th century. This means, the original narratives in Mark stopped at the empty tomb. With this discovery, we lay out the resurrection narratives from 4 Gospels, side by side, by the dates of its compositions - Other than observing the inconsistencies between these 4 narratives, what else can we observe? The stories, about the aftermath of Jesus' death, became more and more fabulous as the time went by, and this pattern has a similar look to legendary development. However, this is also not the sole reason that led me to deconvert from Christianity. As I mentioned earlier, I am a very stubborn person, and it took more powerful reasons and evidence to finally convince me, that Christianity is improbable.

Some of my agnostic and atheist friends can bear testimonies to my long, and exhaustive journey to deconversion, which took as long as 18 months! Looking back, I really should have stopped believing in Christianity long before that point. The only reason my exodus from Christianity took 18 months, was because I desperately wanted to believe in Christianity and I did not want to let go, of what was literally, my everything.

But sadly I am going to end my story here, because from this point and onward, my own journey to deconversion deviates from the contents of the book under review. So now let me come back to talk about this book, How Jesus Became God.

At this point, if you find the above information interesting, and you feel comfortable about reading a book that may challenge your own belief, then as a continuation from the topics about: 1) Q, L, M hypothesis, 2) Jesus' apocalyptic teachings, and 3) how to authenticate the words of Jesus in the Bible; I recommend you read page 94-109 in How Jesus Became God. You will see how Professor Ehrman digs deeply into the verses in Mark 9:10 and Mark 13:30, and explaining why these verses play an important role in our understanding of who Jesus really was. Let me tease you by mentioning this: We can be quite sure, those 2 verses from Mark really were Jesus' own words. How? The criterion of dissimilarity. What is this? I would encourage you to read this book and find out for yourself. If you have heard about the criterion of dissimilarity from Christian apologists, then please read Professor Erhman's book, and see for yourself how mainstream scholarship is using this criterion differently to the way church uses it. Having said this, if you are going to pick up this book to read those 15 pages, then I think you might just as well read the whole book. Why? I think you would be doing yourself a disservice by reading only 15 pages of this book but missing out on the rest of the good stuff.

I deeply enjoyed reading How Jesus Became God. Reading this book was albeit like being in a time traveling, detective story. Where Professor Ehrman invited me to be seated on his time machine. We travelled back to the days of early Christianity when Jesus still walked the earth, where Professor Ehrman explained to me, the meaning of Jesus' words in its historical contexts. In the next phase of our journey, we walked alongside the early Christians, where we witnessed how they battled each other for "orthodoxy", a battle that increased the sophistication of Christianity's doctrine, making it more paradoxical. Until Christianity reached a turning point with the arrival of Emperor Constantine and after, where Christian theology became even more sophisticated and paradoxical due to rising problems from Christian's new belief about who Jesus was. Along our expedition, Professor Ehrman presented good evidence, and analysis based on historical context and powerful deductions, to shed light into a story that changed the world, a story of how a Jewish preacher from Galilee was exalted by early Christians into a being of equal status with the creator of the universe.

Some people might accuse Professor Ehrman for intentionally trying to "discredit" Christianity. But that is not true, I do not think this is the work of an anti-theist trying to discredit a religion. No, I see a distinguished scholar with a deep love for history, who carefully and wonderfully reconstructed a piece of history from a bygone era. These are the histories that led to the formation of the world's largest religion. Of course Professor Ehrman's book will not please some Christians, but this is because he is speaking as a historian, not a Christ worshiping theologian. 

A historian's job is to reconstruct the most probable history, not confirming a religious belief.

I highly recommend How Jesus Became God. This is a wonderful book to read at Christmas time! Even if you disagree with Professor Ehrman's conclusion, you will still find this book intriguing and challenging. No matter what your existing belief about who Jesus was, I think How Jesus Became God will still inspire you to take another look at this Jewish preacher from Galilee, who lived 2000 years ago, and his story of life and death started a religion that continues to attracting billions of followers today.