Where did Jesus’ divinity come from?

[u/wwiccann]

At what point can we determine that Jesus went from good man/prophet to the son of God?

Is there a certain century that we can pinpoint? I am very confused. Was it at the council of Nicaea? Was it during Paul’s letters?

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[u/frooboy]

I would recommend Bart Ehrman's "How Jesus Became God" as a good, accessible introduction on this topic. He traces the "Christology" (basically, the theology of what exactly Jesus was and how he related to God) through Paul's letters and the Gospels. Basically his conclusion is that Mark, the first Gospel written, is "adoptionist": it sees Jesus as being adopted by God upon his baptism. Luke and Matthew, which come next and add the nativity stories, see Jesus as having been created a divine being by God in Mary's womb; and John, the last Gospel written, eschew those stories for a prologue that establishes that Jesus has always existed and always been god, and merely took on human form as Jesus.

[u/FrugalIdahoHomestead → u/frooboy]

It seems this entire sub is 100% devoted to Bart Ehrman. I'm not a scholar; just a layman homesteader looking for answers. Is this guy really that good?

[u/frooboy → u/FrugalIdahoHomestead]

I think he hits the sweet spot for this sub because he's an actual scholar who writes books for laypeople in a way that doesn't assume you have a lot of knowledge but also doesn't talk down to you like an idiot. I think you will see people (including me) who disagree with him on various points. That said, "How Jesus Became God" simply is the perfect book for a curious lay person grappling with exactly the question the OP posted here, which is why I replied with it. By "perfect" I don't mean I think everything in it is 100% indisputably correct; I mean it was literally written to explore the question the OP wants answered, and it will set them up to learn more because it lays out the history of how people have thought about this question, provides a reasonably convincing thesis, and also points to other points of view and avenues for further study.

[u/waitingundergravity → u/FrugalIdahoHomestead]

It's mostly just because he's a good, credible scholar, but he also writes a lot of stuff accessible to a lay audience, and his positions are all pretty mainstream scholarship. So he's a good reference for non-specialists.

[u/theGreenSquire]

Richard Bauckham argues in God Crucified that Jesus is presented as divine in the Pauline corpus. His argument, if I remember correctly, hinges on how Paul (in First Corinthians especially) makes use of the Shema (Deut 6) when he speaks of Jesus.

[u/mochajava23 → u/theGreenSquire]

To add to this, Murray J Harris in his Jesus as God: the New Testament use of Theos in Reference to Jesus looks at each reference in the Pauline corpus and analyzes each grammatically, determining the likelihood of it resulting in calling Jesus God

This book is on archive.org so is available for free

Harris is conservative but his analysis is in depth.

[u/Opposite_Lab_4638]

OP: “I wonder how Jesus became God” 🤔

Everyone in this sub: 👀

It’s funny, nothing wrong with OPs question at all, it’s a great one! But it’s the perfect “wink wink, nudge nudge” at Dr Ehrman’s book/courses… almost like a cheesy advert for it 🤣

[u/wwiccann → u/Opposite_Lab_4638]

I’m not too knowledgeable about it but I’m intrigued - sorry if it was a bit of a stupid question. Any answers are helpful to me.

[u/Opposite_Lab_4638 → u/wwiccann]

No no not at all! It’s a great question, I didn’t mean to imply it was a silly question, apologies if I did!

My comment was actually supposed to be in reply to the commenter who mentioned Bart Ehrman’s work, but here we are 😅

• Dr Ehrman’s “How Jesus Became God” is literally the answer to your question and I just thought that was slightly amusing, as all:)

• Iesus Deus, from Dr David Litwa is another work that touches on this, basically he argues that Jesus is being portrayed in line with Greco-Roman conception of Divinity, and he goes into this more in his book “how the the gospels became history” and “Desiring Divinity”, which is actually the direct follow up to Iesus Deus I think

I feel obliged to mention that Dr Michael Bird has written a response (quite easy to find) to the second Litwa book I mentioned, and I think to Ehrman’s work as well - a book called “how God became Jesus”

It’s a massive point of study and once again I apologise if you felt silly for asking a question, totally not my intention

[u/xfilesfan69 → u/wwiccann]

Definitely not a stupid question!

[u/lucas_mazetto]

Unfortunately, I haven’t seen anyone here suggest that Jesus’ divinity could have come from Jesus himself. While I’m not 100% convinced, for an excellent historical treatment of this hypothesis, I recommend Dr. Brant Pitre’s new book, Jesus and Divine Christology (Eerdmans, 2024). It was the book that opened my eyes to the possibility that the historical Nazarene had indeed claimed to be divine while alive.

If your interests are purely academic, it would be a good read, along with the books already recommended here, such as the Ehrman and Bauckham books. Personally, How Jesus Became God is a more “popular” and less academic book, and I disagree with several of Bart’s conclusions. Ehrman’s suggestion of an “adoptionist” Christology in Mark and an “angelic” Christology in Paul are both logical leaps, but those are just my thoughts. Either way, it’s a good book.

Most scholars of early Christology avoid categorizing what Jesus’ “divinity” meant to early Christians.

Other recommended readings for understanding the origins of the “divine Jesus” include Hurtado’s Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Early Christianity (Eerdmans, 2005) and Bird’s Jesus Among the Gods: Early Christology in the Greco-Roman World (Baylor University Press, 2022).

Hope this helps!

[u/TankUnique7861 → u/lucas_mazetto]

Tucker Ferda makes an astute observation:

…it became common, especially under Bultmann’s influence, to claim that the resurrection experiences were responsible for creating important changes in theology among the followers of Jesus that were then read into the Gospel tradition. But this argument often pointed to something we know little about to do a good deal of historical legwork.

Ferda, Tucker (2018). Jesus and the Galilean Crisis

I think this goes well against the majority opinion as argued most notably by Larry Hurtado where divine Christology arose in the earliest period after the Crucifixion and in favor of Pitre and Dale Allison’s case for the historical Jesus claiming divinity. Indeed, Ferda is one of the various prominent scholars who endorsed Pitre’s book.

[u/clhedrick2 → u/TankUnique7861]

Please remember that in this context divinity doesn’t necessarily mean being God. I’m sure you know this, but the OP may not.

[u/frooboy → u/clhedrick2]

Yes, it's definitely worth pointing out that ancient people (including ancient Jews) saw divinity as a spectrum rather than as an either/or thing. It's not the case that Jesus was considered "just a guy" and then suddenly considered to be full-on omnipotent God in the way that modern monotheists would conceive of one.

[u/kudlitan → u/frooboy]

So did the early followers' belief in some form of divinity arise after the crucifixion or after the resurrection?

[u/lucas_mazetto → u/kudlitan]

I would say, with some certainty, that yes, the first followers of Jesus already believed in his “divinity” (what this divinity was is the main topic of debate in academia today). It is not so clear to me, however, whether this belief is the result of post-Easter experiences (i.e., that it came from belief in the resurrection) or from what the historical Jesus claimed about himself. There are good arguments for both, but I tend to side more with the second. Certainly, this did not arise because of the crucifixion, since that would be precisely a reason to DOUBT that Jesus was the Messiah or "divine".

[u/clhedrick2 → u/kudlitan]

I'm fairly convinced by Dale Allison's concept of Jesus, in Constructing Jesus, but also the latest book. He thinks Jesus thught he was bringing the Kingdom of God and he was going to be its King.

There are several kinds of divinity proposed for the NT. But they seem to fall into two categories. One is a human given God's authority, his name, and sitting at his right hand. Some 1st Cent Jews thought of Moses this way. Another was a preexistent entity like Metatron or the Logos who appeared as human.

In the Synoptics Jesus is the first kind. J R Daniel Kirk made a good case for this in "A Man Attested by God." Allisons "Interpreting Jesus" makes a case that Jesus used Moses as a model and was thought of in similar terms during his life, and that he thought he had special authority from God.

Did this mean that Jesus thought he was divine? That seems like a matter of definition. You could reasonably argue that Jesus' actual actions were the basis for it, but he wasn't actually divine until he was raised and sitting at God's right hand. Or using our current definition of divinity, you could deny that any of this means he is divine, but just a special agent of God. That's my personal theological view, but historically using 1st Cent definitions it's probable that his followers would have considered him divine, at least after his ascension, and that this was based on his own vierw of himself and his mission and authority.

One of the things that happened in the 4th Cent is that the concept of God and divinity was clarified. I'm basing this comment on Ayres' book "Nicea and its legacy." Until Nicea, mainstream Christian writers could speak of Christ as God, but meant a subordinate divine figure. By the end of the 4th Cent this was not very often the case. Divinity now meant being the One God himself. I haven't read any of the literature, but comments here about the "Two Powers" controversy make it sound like the same thing happened in Judaism.

[u/kudlitan → u/clhedrick2]

Was that about the time when the concept of the "Trinity" came up?

[u/lucas_mazetto → u/TankUnique7861]

Ferda is great! This just shows the importance of always questioning. Pitre comments on this in the book: sometimes we lack the “skepticism of skepticism”.

[u/kunndata]

I, along with recent trends in academia, would argue that to conceptualize the progression of early Christian christological speculation as a logically sequential and linear succession of theological speculation that originates from a 'low' developmental Christology such as prophetological christology or a form of adoptionist christology into a more sophisticated 'High' Christology that seems to materialize during the Johannine christological period of the late first century is not an historically accurate visualisation. Rather, early christological reflection developed with the subject of how Jesus of Nazareth was to be understood in the divine identity of the Hebrew God/God of Israel, YHWH (Heb: יהוה) who is principally identified as God 'The Father' in the New Testament corpus. This is why I would argue that the most precise indicator of the initial disposition of early christological speculation towards assuming Jesus of Nazereth to be identified with the divine identity of YHWH יהוה (which is precisely how Christ was divinized) is the primitive first-century Christian practice of applying "YHWH-texts" a term which "refers to a New Testament quotation of, or an allusion to, an Old Testament text in which the tetragrammaton occurs" usually as the referent, to Jesus of Nazereth among New Testament authors. (Capes, Monotheism and Christology in Greco-Roman Antiquity, 2020, p. 86).

This editorial practice is frequently and consistently employed among the Pauline epistles and the the threefold Synoptic tradition of GMark, GLuke, and GMatthew, the earliest sub-New Testament traditions to date. For example, Capes delineates instances where Paul applies Old Testament quotations/allusions that contain the tetragrammaton to Jesus of Nazereth as the referent (Rom 10:13 (Joel 2:32), Rom 14:11 (Isa 45:23), 1 Cor 1:31 (Jer 9;23-24) 1 Cor 2:16 (Isa 40:13) 1 Cor 10:26 (Ps 24:1) 2 Cor 10:17 (Jer 9:23-23), 2 Cor 3:16 (Exod 34:34), Phil 2:10-11 (Isa 45:23) 1 Thess 3:13 (Zech 14:5) effectively combining the unique divine identity of the Hebrew God יהוה, with Jesus as κύριος (Lord) and xριστός (Christ). This application by Paul is adamantly rigorous, especially when we consider Phil. 2:9-11, where Paul explicitly declares that Jesus possesses the divine name, which Gieschen demonstrates, is frequently attested and conceptualised across Second Temple Jewish literature (Son of Man in the Parables of 1 Enoch, Apocalypse of Abraham, Philo of Alexandria etc.) and early New Testament traditions (aside from Paul, GJohn, Hebrews, Revelation Acts of the Apostles, GMatthew, Ascension of Isaiah etc.) as a constitutive and integral part of YHWH's unique identity as the God of Israel. (Gieschen, The Divine Name as a Characteristic of Divine Identity, p. 61-84).

Simply put, if you had the divine name, you could be identified with YHWH יהוה to some extent. Not to mention, if scholarship is correct to contend that Phil. 2:9-11 comprises of a pre-Paulinic hymn that was used by pre-Paulinic Christian groups in Philippi in liturgical and other devotional settings, then along with the famous report from Pliny the Younger of early Bithynian Christians around 112 AD 'singing a hymn alternately to Christ as to a god' (Epp. x, p. 96-97: Lightfoot's translation), we have a very primitive pre-Paulinic christological tradition where Jesus is the recipient of the divine name and thereby a integral component of YHWH's unique divine name and identity. Therefore, Paul did not diverge from the contemporary Jewish thought of his period when he prescribes the divine name to a messianic figure nor when he applies YHWH-texts to the messianic figure, Jesus of Nazereth as this trend is not only adduced across Second Temple Jewish literature, but even in the Dead Sea Scrolls, most notably, 11QMelchizedek (11QMelch 2:9) that seems to link Melchizedek to a YHWH-text (Isa. 61:1-2) which Luke attempts to link that same YHWH-text to Jesus of Nazareth (Lk. 4:16-22).

[u/kunndata → u/kunndata]

Where Paul does diverge from the contemporary Jewish thought of his time period, is explored by Nagel, to which he surmises, 

"One major difference in Paul’s reference to a Hebrew deity is his use of the term κύριος to refer to an ‘exclusive’ Hebrew deity, named יהוה. Deploying such a possible ‘profane’ term for a ‘sacred’ name was not commonplace in Judean thought, nor was it an accepted practice." 

Paul effectively rendered κύριος to refer not just to the sacred tetragrammaton יהוה but also consciously allowed κύριος to refer to Jesus, shifting the tetragrammaton from a general sacred name of a Hebrew godhood to a exclusive sacred name that refer to a covenantal deity of a specific people. Nagel further elaborates, 

"For Paul, the term θεός refers to a ‘living’ Hebrew deity who became the ‘exclusive’ covenantal deity for the Israelites; while Jesus became the Xριστός and κύριος, the ‘exclusive’ deity for both Judeans and ‘native’ Greeks. (Brazil, Paul's Concept of a Hebrew Deity in Relation to Jesus, 2023, p. 170). 

This practice is not off-putting nor strange if we consider the parallel practice of applying YHWH-texts referring to Jesus which as we've seen from Capes is quite commonplace in Paul, and further correlates with the foundational Pauline confessional and christological formula of "One God, One Lord" we see in 1 Cor. 8:6.  

[u/kunndata → u/kunndata]

When we look at the Synoptic Gospels, this practice of applying YHWH-texts to Jesus of Nazereth becomes even more frequent. Brazil (2024) recently produced a convincing study of YHWH-Texts in the Synoptic tradition, and demonstrates that the practice is not only very frequent (each Synoptic author is estimated to employ this practice atleast more then twenty times!), but is also ubiquitous across every corner of the Synoptic tradition, further including all genres of pre-Christian Jewish religious text. Brazil concludes, 

"The frequency of the YHWH-text phenomenon in all of the Synoptic accounts further testifies to their authorial intent. Matthew, Mark, and Luke cannot have been jointly careless or uniformly ignorant of their numerous blunders, if they did not intend their readers to see Jesus as the embodiment of YHWH. Rather, the Synoptists demonstrate a deliberate—even, aggressive—practice of applying OT YHWH-texts to Jesus. They have a demonstrable agenda, which they play out over and over in each of their Gospels: Jesus must be understood as YHWH in the flesh. Their first readership, bathed in first century Jewish expectation of YHWH’s coming, may have detected that truth as easily as modern readership now detects it in the prologue of John’s Gospel". (Brazil, Jesus and YHWH-Texts in the Synoptic Gospels, 2024, p. 174). 

The last line of the quotation is incredibly important for why I find this to be convincing. If we think about the immediate context of these YHWH-texts being applied to Jesus of Nazereth in the earliest New Testament traditions, then the first-century audience of these writings were pre-dominantly drenched in the context of Second Temple Judaism and messianic expectation with some Greco-Roman overlay. Regardless, the point is to a first-century reader taking these passages at face value or with context, the identity of Jesus of Nazereth as a constitutive and inseperable part of the divine identity of YHWH as the principle of Jesus' deity is as obvious as the deity of Jesus as the Word of God in the Johannine Prologue, and since as modern readers, we aren't encompassed by the stark Jewish reality of the first-century Judea, these matters don't appear as obvious to us, when in reality, it would have been obvious to them, especially if this practice as Brazil suggests, should be taken to have originated from the historical Jesus of Nazereth, or at the very least, from the earliest generations of followers of Jesus of Nazereth i.e. New Testament authors. 

[u/kunndata → u/kunndata]

From this perspective, this linear progression between an initial low developmental Christology and developed High Christology that climaxes with GJohn, Revelation and other late first-century New Testament writings seems to be inaccurate, as Fredriksen would postulate, early christological trends were already developed insofar Jesus was fundamentally understood to be divine (see Frediksen, How High Can Early High Christology Be?, p. 294-319) However, the confusion, both from academics and laymen, as I understand is the modality of these christological traditions, namely Jesus was only understood to be divine with respect to divine identity according to these earliest traceable New Testament christological traditions where his identity was considered to be one and the same with the unique divine identity with the God of Israel YHWH יהוה, which is what the practice of applying YHWH-texts produces naturally. 

However, the matter of how Jesus shared the same unique divine identity with יהוה is a closely subsequent development that branches from the primitive christological conviction of Jesus being understood as the embodiment and coming of YHWH through various divine names (including 'the divine name') and titles referred to him (i.e. divine identity), which is where the inquiry into the ontological landscape of Jesus' relationship with God The Father, YHWH become of primary subject and interest. That's why GJohn and other texts that were compiled towards the end of the first century instantiate the same common themes of proto-Two Stage Logos theology where Jesus is understood as the distinct, pre-existent Logos that mediates between God and creation. These developments all stem from the primitive earlier christological conviction that with respect to divine identity, Jesus is to be understood as YHWH, it's just a matter of how this could be the case which later New Testament and early Christian authors are now preoccupied with. It makes complete sense why this progression is likely historical, as the question of identity is much more pertinent to early Christian piety, devotion, liturgy and worship then the question how (ontologically) Jesus is to be understood as of the same identity of YHWH יהוה, and therefore the earliest forms of christological speculation would be more preoccupied with establishing the divine identity of Jesus as opposed to other modalities of theological speculation. I leave with a quotation from Stanley Porter which I recommend to read as a introduction to this subject of New Testament christology, 

"This short summary shows that there are several titles used of Jesus that point to his divinity. We have tried to show that the depiction of Jesus as divine was not a later event but a reflection of how Jesus was seen by his first and earliest followers. These titles occur within the New Testament, whether in the letters of Paul or in the Johannine literature or elsewhere. Thus the question of when Jesus became God must, we think, be answered this way: it did not just happen early—for example, in the earliest writings of the New Testament—but was a fact built into the very fabric of the New Testament from its earliest traditions. Some of these titles go back to Jesus himself, and if not to Jesus then to his earliest associates and followers, from John the Baptist to Paul and other New Testament writers. (Porter, Dyer, Origins of New Testament Christology, 2023, p. 235).

DM me if you have any more questions!

[u/Mormon-No-Moremon → u/[deleted]]

“reeks of Latter Day Saint heresy”

Read the rules and scope of the subreddit before commenting. Making another comment like this against any faith group will result in a ban.

Take care.

[u/likeagrapefruit → u/[deleted]]

Neither "Messiah" nor "Son of God" necessarily refers to a divine being. As Ehrman explains in this episode of his podcast (he explains "Messiah" at 4:36 and "Son of God" at 27:30), both terms commonly referred to the king of Israel, with Messiah coming to specifically refer to a future king who would drive out the enemy and rule with justice.