I am reading the second great book that explains that Christianity did not start out with Jesus being God.
The first was the Great Courses Study - "How Jesus Became God" by Professor Bart D. Ehrman - This is a more formal Religious Studies textbook on the history of Christianity and orthodoxy.
The second is more interesting, personal, parable by a minister that explains how a divine Jesus is bad theology.
"Saving Jesus from the Church" by Robin R. Meyers. He is looking at a lot of 'mainstream' Christians and wanting nothing to do with 'Christianity'.
He goes through the parts of the NT on which are historically accurate and which are 'power play' theological constructs.
The 'bodily' resurrection did not appear until AFTER and in societal response to the destruction of the temple. St. Paul, the good Pharisee, added that without knowing the living Jesus.
Virgin births & rising from the dead were COMMON themes at the time - But ONLY for the rich & powerful, not poor nobodies.
Part of 'religious' doctrine was added after the unholy matrimony with the Roman Empire.
No original sin.
Part of Table of Contents:
Prologue - A Preacher's nightmare: Am I Christian?
1 - Jesus the Teacher, Not the Saviour
2 Faith as Being, Not Belief
3. The Cross as Futility, not forgiveness.
4. Easter as Presence, Not Proof
5. Original Blessing, not original sin
looking forward to finishing the book.
Subscription Note:
Choosing to subscribe to this topic will automatically register you for email notifications for comments and updates on this thread.
Email notifications will be sent out daily by default unless specified otherwise on your account which you can edit by going to your userpage here and clicking on the subscriptions tab.
Both excellent sources. Richard Carrier also takes the position that the Jesus myth began in the old testament.
Began - Not really. The messiah messages got merged together. The NT writers used a lot of the prophecies, beliefs, and themes and merged them into the Jesus story.
Good finds Mrs O.
And Ehrmann is also on you tube taking about that very book.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+jesus+became+god+-+ucc+...
And looking forward to hearing from Robyn Meyers in this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnfJcZkZ2OU
Got my Sunday night viewing all lined up. :)
Thanks for the overview of the books. This kind of stuff is part of the reason why I'm no longer a believer in Biblegod. If God exists, surely he could have done a better job assembling the Bible. Give it all at once and have it float down from heaven with a sparkly seal made of angel fairy dust or something that would be unmistakably divine, SOMETHING. It just can't be used a reliable word of God or proof of God.
I disagree - Too many people have the opinion that the Bible is exactly that. The point is for us to decide and choose.The Bible is us trying to figure out how to live in the World. The Bible is essentially what won the consensus.
We are still doing this. Every sermon or religious study text is someone else trying to make sense of it. The men in charge picked 4 out of about 20 Gospels of the time to include. They included what they all could agree on & pitched the rest. (I've read some of them. They can get really strange.) Nothing new has been deemed significantly important to add.
Catholic tradition if full of other writings. It seems that you come from a Protestant faith that further reduced the code and insisted what was left was straight dictation. Every serious Bible scholar I have read said that is utter nonsense, starting with Augustine in the 300's.