{"id":6495,"date":"2014-03-27T12:38:07","date_gmt":"2014-03-27T16:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/euangelion\/?p=6495"},"modified":"2014-03-26T21:42:01","modified_gmt":"2014-03-27T01:42:01","slug":"did-the-early-church-invent-jesus-divinity-after-the-fact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/euangelion\/2014\/03\/did-the-early-church-invent-jesus-divinity-after-the-fact\/","title":{"rendered":"Did the Early Church Invent Jesus\u2019 Divinity After the Fact?"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>Over at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/did-the-early-church-invent-jesus-divinity-after-the-fact-michael-bird-discusses-bart-ehrmans-new-book-and-an-unusual-rebuttal\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">BibleGateway<\/a> is a interview I did with Emily Varner about Bart Ehrman, Jesus\u2019 divinity, and the New Testament.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s a teaser:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>EV:<\/strong>\u00a0How would you respond if someone said, \u201cDoesn\u2019t this discussion just boil down to faith (\u2018just trust the church teaching\u2019) or respect for the Bible (\u2018the Bible says it, that settles it\u2019)\u201d?<\/p>\n<p><strong>MB:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, yes, in one sense, you either believe the church\u2019s testimony or you don\u2019t. The important question is, however, what does the church\u2019s testimony about Jesus found in Scripture actually say? Ehrman and friends think that it does not give a clear or consistent presentation of his divine nature, but ebbs and flows over different ways of identifying him as divine in vague or incomplete senses, and the NT language about Jesus has been largely misread or misunderstood. Okay, maybe some good points are scored by Ehrman here and there, but for the most part, we are not convinced by the evidence or the reasons that Ehrman provides for thinking that Jesus was \u201cdivine\u201d in the senses that Ehrman maps onto the various books of the New Testament.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over at BibleGateway is a interview I did with Emily Varner about Bart Ehrman, Jesus\u2019 divinity, and the New Testament. Here\u2019s a teaser: EV:\u00a0How would you respond if someone said, \u201cDoesn\u2019t this discussion just boil down to faith (\u2018just trust the church teaching\u2019) or respect for the Bible (\u2018the Bible says it, that settles it\u2019)\u201d? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Did the Early Church Invent Jesus\u2019 Divinity After the Fact?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Over at BibleGateway is a interview I did with Emily Varner about Bart Ehrman, Jesus&#039; divinity, and the New Testament. Here&#039;s a teaser: EV:\u00a0How would you\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/euangelion\/2014\/03\/did-the-early-church-invent-jesus-divinity-after-the-fact\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Did the Early Church Invent Jesus\u2019 Divinity After the Fact?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Over at BibleGateway is a interview I did with Emily Varner about Bart Ehrman, Jesus&#039; divinity, and the New Testament. Here&#039;s a teaser: EV:\u00a0How would you\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/euangelion\/2014\/03\/did-the-early-church-invent-jesus-divinity-after-the-fact\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Euangelion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/michael.bird.33\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-03-27T16:38:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-03-27T01:42:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Michael F. Bird\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@mbird12\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Michael F. 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