Over at Unbelievable Justin Brierly talks to both Simon Gathercole and Bart Ehrman about Jesus’ divinity. Listen to part two here. In regards to Ehrman’s initial remark about the blurb to HGBJ, Ehrman thinks Jesus is “divine” or “god” in some sense along a spectrum of divinity immediately after his resurrection in the mind of his followers. However, Ehrman does not think that Jesus was “God Almighty” until the Council of Nicea. Read more

Several reviews and comments on the “christology war” books have appeared. Here’s a few: Parchment and Pen (Rob Bowman). A good summary of both books and an evaluation of each one, including recognition of the stuff that Ehrman gets right. Sadly, Bowman does not “get” my sense of humour and takes issue with how I frame John’s Gospels (sigh), but he gives a great plug for Craig Evan’s work on the burial traditions! Tim Chester (Tim Chester). Gives a good... Read more

Here is the audio for Ehrman’s interview on the radio show “Interfaith Voices” about his new book. Read more

Over at The Marginalia Review of Books is a great review by Helen Bond of Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne’s edited volume on Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity. Bond is a very capable scholar, having written on Pontius Pilate, Caiaphas, and fine introduction to the historical Jesus. I think she puts it well when she says: It is clear that future historical work will need to abandon the traditional piecemeal approach. Instead, we’ll need to attempt to understand each... Read more

Over at the Eerdmans blog is an interview with Doug Campbell about his forthcoming book Framing Paul: An Epistolary account. The blurb reads: All historical work on Paul presupposes a story concerning the composition of his letters — which ones he actually wrote, how many pieces they might originally have consisted of, when he wrote them, where from, and why. But the answers given to these questions are often derived in dubious ways. In Framing Paul Douglas Campbell reappraises all these issues in rigorous fashion,... Read more

Over at the Huffington Post, Bart Ehrman gives a very good summary of his argument set forth in How Jesus Became God. To whet your appeitite, he writes: Many believers – at least very conservative evangelical Christians and others who have not had much contact with biblical scholarship – will be surprised to learn that Jesus did not spend his preaching ministry in Galilee proclaiming that he was the second member of the Trinity. In fact, as I argue in the... Read more

I know its late, but In light of Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, I thought I should post up an article I write some years ago called: “Jesus and the Revolutionaries: Did Jesus Call Israel to Repent of Nationalistic Ambitions?” Colloquium 38.2 (2006): 127-39. It touches on the Jesus-the-Zealot view set forth by Reimarus and Brandon who argued for it a light time before Aslan.   Read more

Here’s a video promo of How God Became Jesus largely thanks to Wayne Chan. Read more

For me one of the highlights of SBL 2013 was the “Perfect Storm” session featuring Stan Porter, Con Campbell, and Buist Fanning.  It was a discussion about the nature of the biblical Greek’s perfect tense-form in relation to verbal aspect. It was a cracker of a discussion! I’m friends with both Stan and Con so I felt a little torn in deciding who got the better of the debate. In a nutshell, Fanning argued for something close to the traditional... Read more

Nick Peters from Deep Waters interviews Charles Hill, Chris Tilling, and Michael Bird – all on three different continents – about the book How God Became Jesus. The blogcast goes for a massive two hours! I think I came in at about the 65 mins mark. Charles and Chris do a great job talking up what is at stake in the issue and what a good account of early Christian christology should look like! Read more