{"id":22324,"date":"2014-03-17T10:45:10","date_gmt":"2014-03-17T14:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=22324"},"modified":"2014-03-17T10:45:10","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T14:45:10","slug":"wash-your-hands-of-bad-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/03\/wash-your-hands-of-bad-history.html","title":{"rendered":"Wash Your Hands of Bad History"},"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>I have yet to read either of the dueling books, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0061778184\/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0061778184&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=jamefmcgrshom-20\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important;margin: 0px !important\" src=\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=jamefmcgrshom-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0061778184\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\"><\/em> and <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00I2P2OVS\/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00I2P2OVS&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=jamefmcgrshom-20\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus\u2019 Divine Nature\u2014A Response to Bart Ehrman<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important;margin: 0px !important\" src=\"https:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=jamefmcgrshom-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B00I2P2OVS\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\"><\/em>. When I do, I will discuss them in terms of their contents and arguments.<\/p>\n<p>But the latter probably wins clean hands down for the cleverer marketing strategy. I just got this in the mail together with a copy of the book:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-22328\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2014\/03\/Wash-Your-Hands.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"672\" height=\"752\"><\/p>\n<p>Hand sanitizer, together with a piece of publicity material with the title \u201cWash your hands of bad history.\u201d Very clever \u2013 and useful!<\/p>\n<p>For those interested in this topic, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/2014\/03\/17\/since-god-is-one-the-monotheism-of-judaism-and-christianity\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">Ben Witherington also posted today about Jewish monotheism and early Christology<\/a>. I am not persuaded by his line of reasoning. It doesn\u2019t seem to me that simply saying \u201cI am adding this person within rather than alongside the one God\u201d would have allowed early Christians to completely sidestep issues of monotheism. Indeed, tampering with the nature of the one God would arguably have been more controversial than adding an agent alongside that God.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0061778184\/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0061778184&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=jamefmcgrshom-20\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?_encoding=UTF8&amp;ASIN=0061778184&amp;Format=_SL160_&amp;ID=AsinImage&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;WS=1&amp;tag=jamefmcgrshom-20\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"><\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important;margin: 0px !important\" src=\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=jamefmcgrshom-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0061778184\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\"> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00I2P2OVS\/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00I2P2OVS&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=jamefmcgrshom-20\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?_encoding=UTF8&amp;ASIN=B00I2P2OVS&amp;Format=_SL160_&amp;ID=AsinImage&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;WS=1&amp;tag=jamefmcgrshom-20\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"><\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important;margin: 0px !important\" src=\"https:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=jamefmcgrshom-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B00I2P2OVS\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\"><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have yet to read either of the dueling books, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee and How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus\u2019 Divine Nature\u2014A Response to Bart Ehrman. When I do, I will discuss them in terms of their contents and arguments. But [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":22328,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,60],"tags":[1023,1024,1101,1828,1858,4005,7417,7651,7862,10353],"class_list":["post-22324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christology","category-monotheism","tag-bart-d-ehrman","tag-bart-ehrman","tag-ben-witherington","tag-christ","tag-christology","tag-god","tag-mike-bird","tag-monotheism","tag-n-t-wright","tag-richard-bauckham"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Wash Your Hands of Bad History<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I have yet to read either of the dueling books, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee and How God Became Jesus: The Real\" \/>\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\/religionprof\/2014\/03\/wash-your-hands-of-bad-history.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Wash Your Hands of Bad History\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have yet to read either of the dueling books, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee and How God Became Jesus: The Real\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/03\/wash-your-hands-of-bad-history.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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